![]() So if a newscaster was saying, "Tonight in Iraq," it would come through as "T-t-t-t-t-t-o-o-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-ight in Ira-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q." The audio would start to stutter and then catch up, creating an annoying robotic-like stuttering sound. This was most evident during any playback that involved audio, including songs and live and Recorded TV shows. After doing a clean install of Windows Vista on my Media Center, downloading all the latest drivers and updates, and copying over my content, I was surprised to see that the machine was horribly underpowered. In Beta 2, at least, performance is comically bad. Is more visual and is horizontally oriented for widescreen displays. It takes a little getting used to, but in the Recorded TV user interface, in particular, where my four year old daughter could pick out her shows by seeing the pictures (see can't read yet), this was particularly effective.Ī nice use of space: Like many experiences in Media Center Vista, Recorded TV For example, the UI is now oriented to widescreen displays like the HDTV to which my Media Center PC is connected, and content takes advantage of this horizontal real estate by moving left to right visually, instead of up and down in a text list, as in previous Media Center versions. Much of what's changed in Media Center Vista is quite good. but dig a little deeper, and the old-style MCE 2005 interface shows up. Some of the MCE interface has been overhauled to dramatic effect. That is, in Media Center Vista, some bits of the UI have been switched over to the new style, but others-like the screens you see when you select a TV show, video, photo, or song-are still stuck back in a weird XP Media Center time machine. current) version of Media Center and a future version in which the UI will be completely overhauled. Hopefully, I learned something.įirst, the version of Media Center that ships with Windows Vista is a half-way house between the "old" (i.e. ![]() But as I sat there in the dark, working on this horrible project, I reflected on the past two weeks and the utter disaster that ensued. Much of the time it took going back to XP involved backing up and restoring about 80 GB of recorded TV shows (mostly for the kids), copying back my tens of gigabytes of family photos and videos and music from the media server, and reconfiguring XP Media Center to understand our cable box, the channels we get, and the shows I wanted to record. Tuesday morning, at about 3:15 am, I finally finished exorcising Windows Vista Beta 2 from my family's Media Center PC, replacing it with the factory version of XP Media Center it originally shipped with. ![]() So what better way to put the Vista version of Media Center through its paces than to install Windows Vista Beta 2 on the Media Center PC and let my entire family enjoy the testing process as much as I do? After all, this is the ultimate real-world test. They've never know any other way of interacting with televised content. For my young kids, Media Center *is* television. And though I wouldn't normally ask anyone I care about to run beta Microsoft software, we actually use an HP Media Center PC as our primary TV interface, and have been using Microsoft's XP Media Center since the first beta of the first version, way back in early 2002. As we discussed here a few weeks back, Microsoft has made the Beta 2 version of Windows Vista available for free to anyone with a broadband connection. Such was the case over the past two weeks, during which time I inflicted on them the public version of Microsoft's Windows Vista Beta 2. Sometimes, I even get to share with the family. And when it comes to prerelease software and even hardware, there's always a steady stream of upcoming products winding its way through the Thurrott household. One of the perils of reviewing tech products is that you actually have to use them.
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